Why did we bomb Belgrade?
MICHAEL MCCGWIRE
In principle, the question was answered by our political leaders in the days
following the start of NATO’s air campaign against Serbia, In practice, the
answers raised new questions as to why these intelligent men were saying such
things.
Using similar words in various formulations, George Robertson and Robin
Cook explained (repeatedly) that the political objective was to avert a humani-
tarian disaster in Kosovo and/or to prevent a crisis from becoming a cata~
strophe. This was to be achieved by strategic and precision bombing of military
targets (initially in Serbia) in order to reduce the capability of Serb forces to:
continue with their violence; repress the Kosovar Albanians; order ethnic
cleansing. There was an obvious disjunction between the stated military
objective of degrading Serbia's military capability (a slow process) and the
immediate political objective of halting the forced expulsions and associated
killings in Kosovo. Indeed, bombing Belgrade seemed likely to inflame the
situation, and made sense only if one believed that this demonstration of
NATO resolve would cause Slobodan Milosevic to halt the process himself.
That did not happen. We were then told—despite events in Bosnia and
Croatia—that no one could have foreseen that Milosevic could have been so
wicked. The continued bombing was justified by describing what was happen-
ing in Kosovo (which was terrible enough) using exaggerated and emotive lan-
guage, including talk of genocide which, in common parlance, clearly did not
apply. Meanwhile, our leaders continued to demonize Milosevic.
In the past, demonizing has been used to justify offensive military action that
in other circumstances might be questionable. Abdul Nasser (whom Britain
likened to Hitler) at the time of the Suez crisis is one such example; Muammar
Qadhafi as ruler of Libya is another.
So what exactly was afoot? Was this a punishment beating in the Balkans,
where NATO, dissatisfied over UN ineffectiveness, was taking the law into its
own hands? Or was there something more to the whole affair?
This article is divided into two parts. The first is descriptive, reviewing the
situation through to the end of 1998 and then summarizing events during the
first six months of 1999. The second part revisits the evidence, following up
Intemational Affais 76, « (2000) 1-23Michael MecGwire
various anomalies to construct a story that is more plausible (and in many ways
more laudable) than what we were told at the time.
What happened?
Disintegration
‘Yugoslavia was one of the states most severely affected by the foreign debt crisis
in the 1980s, but its special role in NATO strategy had ensured continuing
access to Western credits. However, the winding down of the Cold War
removed this leverage and exposed Yugoslavia to the full rigours of IMF
conditionality. At the same time, Yugoslavia lost its niche position in the Cold
War global economy and found itself in competition with the newly inde-
pendent states of central Europe for Western trade and favours. The resultant
economic austerity and budgetary conflict was hugely divisive and placed heavy
strains on the complex political and socio-economic structure of the federal
state, accentuating nationalistic tendencies which, for different reasons, were on
the rise in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. These strains and the economic
attractions of independence for Croatia and Slovenia led inexorably to the
disintegration of the federal state.
Yugoslavia was a federation of the Southern Slav peoples, and its political
structure combined aspects of a union between sovereign territories with
established borders, and a union between sovereign peoples, whose members
could be living anywhere within the Federation, The right to secede was
unclear and contested. The West (particularly the United States) took the view
that the former republics were states-in-waiting and treated claims on their
territory as international aggression. For Serbia and Croatia, which had
significant minorities living outside their borders, such claims involved
legitimate disputes about how to divide up a failed state. This applied
particularly to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which comprised three national communi-
ties. None had an overall majority, and the Serb minority strongly opposed the
move to declare independence from the Federation.
In other words, the West was oversimplifying when it identified Serb
aggression as the root cause of the Bosnian conflict; even the label ‘multi-ethnic
civil war’ missed the full complexity of what followed the failure of the
Yugoslav state, about which the West had ample warning, And, whatever the
merits of individual cases, there was little to choose between the different
factions and their leaders. Each was adept at manipulating the aid process and
the media, and made whatever gains that opportunity allowed, the level of bru-
tality being largely determined by relative capabilities and the situation on the
ground. Territories and their people were both the pieces and the board for this
ruthless game. Although all sides were guilty of atrocities, up to July 199s (and
including events at Srebrenica), the Bosnian Serbs had committed the over-
whelming majority. However, in August 1995, the US-supported Croatian
army, on the direct authority of the Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, droveWhy did we bomb Belgrade?
Serb forces from the Krajina and ‘cleansed’ the area of its 200,000 inhabitants.
This was by far the largest expulsion up to that point, and was achieved in four
days. The Croats started by shelling villages and towns to create panic and a
disorganized mass exit; this was followed up by assault troops looting shops and
dwellings, and then by the brutal paramilitaries. The Croatian modus operandi
‘was so effective that the Serbs adopted the same approach when they occupied
Kosovo in March 1999.
By the time of the assault on the Krajina, the war had tumed against the
Bosnian Serbs and NATO was able to bomb with impunity. In 1993, Milosevic
had been unsuccessfal in pressurizing them to accept UN-brokered peace pro-
posals; the Bosnian Serbs had felt there was a better deal to be had by continuing
the war. In 1995, they finally accepted that it was time to negotiate, and Milosevic
once again acted as the influential intermediary between his fellow Serbs and
the West, leading ultimately to the Dayton Accord.
Kosovo
By all accounts, Milosevic isa callous, ruthless, politically adept, power-hugging
man. He can be socially engaging, but must never be trusted. The West has,
alternated between vilifying him and finding him indispensable. He did not
create the Kosovo problem, but he did exploit it.
‘The Albanians had resisted incorporation into Yugoslavia in 1918 and again
in 1944. There was an inherent conflict between their long-established wish to
unite Kosovo with Albania, and the emotional attachment by Serbs throughout
Yugoslavia to Kosovo and its holy places. By 1961, Albanians already comprised
67 per cent of Kosovo's population and the Serbs only 24 per cent; in r99r, the
ethnic imbalance would be 90:10.
In 1974 the federal constitution had been amended to make Kosovo an
autonomous province of the Serbian republic. This went a long way towards
satisfying the aspirations of the Albanian majority, but there were still those who
pressed for fall republican status for Kosovo and ultimate union in a Greater
Albania. Following Tito’s death, there were widespread student-led riots and a
period of federally imposed martial law. Meanwhile, there was growing polit-
ical protest among the 200,000 Serbs about their subordinate status and the
Albanians’ oppressive discrimination.
Milosevic seized on this issue as a means of gaining the leadership of the
Serbian Communist Party in 1987, which allowed him to appeal to a much
wider constituency in Serbia, including anti-communists and right-wing nation-
alists. By the time of the ‘million-man’ celebration of the anniversary of the
Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Milosevic had been elected President of the Serb
Republic. More significant, in the multi-party elections held in December 1990
(the first in half a century), Milosevic’s newly formed Serbian Socialist Party
won the support of 65 per cent of those voting (47 per cent of the full electorate).
New laws disadvantaging the Albanians were introduced in 1989 and a con